Loaded Questions (game)
| Expose Your Self | |
|---|---|
| Designer(s) | Eric Poses |
| Publisher(s) | All Things Equal |
| Players | 3-6 |
Loaded Questions is a question-based board game created by Eric Poses in 1996. The game emphasizes socializing.
Recommend 4-6 players (but can be played with fewer or more players) Poses said his game is "very simple" compared to strategy games, as in Loaded Questions "you get through the instructions in about three minutes." He said the game "tests players on how well they know each other."
Players try to be the first person to move from the "START" square to the "WIN!" square. Players traverse the board with dice rolls, and each turn, they have the opportunity to win bonus moves.
Once a player has moved the number of spaces indicated by the dice roll, the player draws a card and asks the question corresponding to the color that the player landed on. The board is made up of spaces of four colors: orange, purple, blue, and yellow, which correspond to questions of the categories "Hypotheticals," "Anything Goes," "No-Brainers," and "Personals," respectively.
Once the roller has read the appropriate question, all other players write their answers on a piece of paper, and one player reads the answers to the roller, who assigns answer writers for each response. For each correct assignment, the roller moves an additional space along the game board, and rolling commences in clockwise fashion.
The game board features "special spaces" in addition to regular, colored spaces. Multi-colored spaces indicate that the player can select any question, from the card drawn, "Happy Trails" spaces allow players to take the indicated shortcut, and "Reversals" call for special play procedures.
For a Reversal, the roller records an answer to the appropriate question, while all other players must anticipate the roller's response. Other players write what they expect the roller to write, and then all non-rolling players read their answers. Once all non-rollers have read, the roller's answer is shared. The roller moves an additional two spaces multiplied by the number of non-rollers who correctly anticipated the roller's response, and each correct non-roller moves two spaces.
Players win the game only after having landed on the "WIN!" space and playing one round where the roller correctly assigns each answer to the appropriate non-roller.
Poses said he was inspired to create the game as a 23-year-old recent college graduate. After he developed the idea, he held a couple of Loaded Questions trial runs with friends before he quit his Miami job as an ad copywriter. He told his employer that he was leaving the job to invest in the board game, and Poses said the man asked to fund the game in return for "a large percentage of the success of the game." Poses declined the offer.
Poses said the game "worked well" in trial runs, and he decided to prepare 5,000 copies of Loaded Questions shortly after resigning.
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